What is the Comptoir De Vie in Paris and its food and cocktail pairings worth?

For twenty years, maybe fifteen, Paris has fancied itself a cocktail capital , trying to make up for lost time and illusions between the city and the shaker. A strange couple who have long lived their nights in hazy love, in sluggish passion, saved by a Bloody Mary at Harry's, an evening at the Rosebud, Hemingway's fantasy at the Ritz. For fifteen years, maybe twenty, a new generation has been struggling to prove that there is better to drink, better to see.

A sipping intelligentsia where bartenders now announce themselves as certified mixologists, bringing out their little science and their avant-garde drinks. In their sincere obsession, they have even invented "pairing" , a hybrid discipline where the cocktail attempts to match the cuisine. The contemporary papillocracy regularly gets excited about it without, in truth, the matter ever having succeeded in either catching on or convincing.

Yet another attempt in recent weeks, with this place determined to prove the virtues of this...